


Today Is Dying

by theprincessandtheking



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 04:39:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10529127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theprincessandtheking/pseuds/theprincessandtheking
Summary: “Look, sorry, but it’s an emergency,” Harper said, eyes firmly fixed on the wall ahead of her.The tea he’d downed at the bar was still in his system, as evidenced by the way the room spun when he reached for his shirt a few feet away and struggled to pull it over his head.“So much of an emergency that you couldn’t knock?”“It’s Clarke.”Post 4x08, for the prompt: okay but what i need now is a fic where bellamy finds out what clarke did. lol Like… imagine that abby didn’t destroy the radiation chamber and clarke actually goes in. imagine bellamy hooks up with that girl and someone barges into his room to tell him what happened back at the lab and yeah.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by Softness, no. 8 by Albert Alexander Bukoski
> 
> Another massive thank you to bellamylovedlincoln on tumblr for beta'ing

 

Bellamy had never been shy about his sexual exploits, per se. Though he hated to admit it, there were many days that his lunch breaks on the Ark were spent boasting about his most recent conquest to his buddies on the guard, back when he was young and stupid and just wanted a few minutes to be a jackass teenager. And even when they’d first landed on the ground, he knew that more than one of the rumors that had circulated around the camp had centered around his ability to handle more than one woman at a time. No matter how much this world had aged him, at the end of the day, he was still just a 23-year-old guy who, like most of them, really fucking loved sex. Sue him.

But that didn’t mean he was particularly thrilled by Harper barging in on him naked and high and pressed up against some girl he barely knew.

“Bellam—oh, god, sorry,” she sputtered, her arm darting up to block the view of the bed. He grappled for the sheets, pulling them over Bree and himself. When he saw that her head had turned, he reached for the boxers that lay crumpled on the floor next to the bed.

“What the _fuck_ , Harper?”

“Look, sorry, but it’s an emergency,” she said, eyes firmly fixed on the wall ahead of her.

The tea he’d downed at the bar was still in his system, as evidenced by the way the room spun when he reached for his shirt a few feet away and struggled to pull it over his head.

“So much of an emergency that you couldn’t knock?”

“It’s Clarke.”

 

* * *

 

 

By the time the boat reached the shore of the island, it felt like someone had filled his pack to the brim with rocks. The effects of the jobi tea had worn off from the moment he’d found himself in the front seat of the rover, begrudgingly sliding into the passenger’s side upon the guards’ insistence that someone who hadn’t been drinking should drive.

Bellamy was fully sober, but his steps were still weighed down by the dread that gripped his heart like a vice. His feet managed to find the wood of the dock, their impact leaving behind a hollow thud that made his bones vibrate.

Miller greeted him with a nod.

“What happened?” Bellamy growled. 

Miller explained the situation in low tones, and Bellamy’s fist clenched tighter with each word. _Of fucking course, she would_. Of course Clarke would sacrifice herself to protect her people. She was so hell bent on bearing the burdens of everyone around her that she would never give someone the opportunity to bear hers.

“Abby’s furious,” Miller went on. “Roan had to physically restrain her to keep her from destroying the radiation chamber.”

“It _should_ have been destroyed,” Bellamy seethed.

“We didn’t have a choice,” he countered. “Clarke knew what she was signing up for. She knew that if we didn’t do it, we’d all be dead. Jackson went slow, and he managed to shut it down before there was any serious damage.”

Bellamy clenched his jaw so tightly he thought his teeth might shatter. He marveled at the way the world had changed all of them, had molded them into the kind of people that could talk about someone who had sold her soul to keep them alive like she was nothing more than a lab rat.

“If anything happens to her,” he snarled, “you’re going to answer to me.”

They made their way across the island in a tense silence. At last, they reached the edge of the trees, and the landscape opened up into a wide clearing that held a monstrous house, pristinely white against the early morning sky. Bellamy felt his breath catch in his throat as he absorbed the sight, the luxuriousness of it all feeling so out of place in such an archaic world. He sensed Miller’s eyes on him and pushed himself forward, forcing himself to avoid the fantasies that now swirled in his mind. This wasn’t a vacation.

They arrived at the house just as the sun broke over the trees, and Bellamy suddenly found himself blanketed in the blinding white that decorated the interior of the mansion. Their footsteps echoed off of the glossy marble floors as Miller led him silently up a broad, curving staircase.

“Third door on the left,” Miller said as he gestured to the hallway at the end of the stairs.

Bellamy nodded a silent thanks, and as he moved down the hall, he couldn’t help but relish the way his boots seemed to sink into the plush carpet beneath them as they padded across the floor. His hand hesitated at the doorknob, mentally preparing himself for whatever he was about to see. He swallowed hard, forcing down the fear that licked at the back of his neck.

The door opened to reveal another white room, this one softened by a golden hue cast from the lamp that rested on the bedside table. The dim lighting seemed to bounce off the white comforter draped over a sleeping form, a few blonde tendrils of hair peeking out to splay across the pillows above it.

“She’s going to be fine.”

Bellamy jumped at the sound of the voice, his eyes darting to the armchair in the corner of the room. Abby sat curled into a ball, the position making her strong frame appear uncharacteristically small. He saw the shadows that rested beneath dark lashes that reminded him so much of Clarke’s it hurt, and he wondered when she’d last allowed herself a good night’s sleep.

“I couldn’t stop it,” she said, her voice cracking like stone in winter. She shut her eyes, a weary hand rising to rub at her temples. “Clarke injected herself with the nightblood, wouldn’t take no for an answer. ‘I bear it so they don’t have to.’”

He flinched reflexively at the words, his mind taken back to a day he’d long since repressed from his mind. A day of sunshine and death and golden curls and goodbyes that broke a heart he didn’t know was still whole.

“I tried to break the radiation chamber,” she continued, her stare focused on the bed across the room. “Roan tied me up in the lab, wouldn’t let me near her. They sedated her, put her under before they put her in there. They increased radiation levels slowly, and Jackson made them stop as soon as she made it past the levels we’ll see in the radiation wave. She has some lesions, but she’ll heal.”

 Bellamy’s heart sank as he listened to her tone become more and more clinical with her words, her stare darkening until she stared at the wall with blank eyes.

“Will we?” he asked. Her eyes met his with a despair that made his stomach clench. “Will humanity heal?”

A shaky breath fell from Abby’s lips.

“First we survive. Then we find our humanity again.”

He wasn’t sure if she was saying this to him or herself, reminding herself of the dangers they faced and the things they’d still have to do to survive. His eyes drifted back to the bed, watching the rise and fall of the blankets with palpable relief.

As he watched her shift slightly in sleep, curls glinting in the soft light, he knew that it hadn’t been worth it. It had worked, but even saving the world would never be worth the risk of losing Clarke Griffin.

“She needs to be woken up again,” Abby said. Bellamy didn’t understand, but she answered the question before he could ask. “Until we’re sure there’s no brain damage.”

She stopped the protest that was already rising to his lips.

“It’s just a precaution. Based on the amount of damage to her dermal layers, I don’t think there’s any way the radiation could have penetrated that deep. It’s no different than making sure someone doesn’t fall asleep after they hit their head.”

He wanted to argue but didn’t see how it would make a difference. His jaw tightened, and he gave a small nod of assent. Before he could reply, Abby stood from her perch at the armchair and made her way to the door.

“Wait, where are you going?” he stammered.

Abby gave him a small smile.

“I think you can handle it from here.”

She turned towards the door. She was pulling the door closed behind her when Bellamy called her name. She peered around the door expectantly.

“You said she’ll be fine,” he repeated. “So why did you call me?”

Her smile widened as she nudged her head toward Clarke.

“She asked us to.”

She was gone with a soft click, leaving behind a silence that hung in the room as Bellamy eyed the bed warily. He took tentative steps in Clarke’s direction, shrugging off his pack and leaning it against the wood of the nightstand before sitting gently on the edge of the bed.

She’d moved slightly, and her face now peeked out from beneath the blankets. Her hair fanned out on the pillow next to her, a few strands falling across her cheek. His hand reached to brush them back from her face, his touch feather-light as to not wake her just yet. He noted with an anger that tugged at his heart that a lesion from the radiation crawled upwards from beneath her jawline to just below her temple. He fought the impulse to run a gentle thumb across it. He allowed himself a moment to look at her, the glow of the dim lighting falling on her cheekbones and across the bridge of her nose in a way that suited the softness of her face. Her lips were full and soft, and a sad smile tugged at his own as he thought of what a far cry this Clarke was from the fierce leader he knew her to be in waking hours.

But Bellamy thought that if the end of the world was here, when the radiation wave came for him, this was the Clarke he wanted to remember. This was the last moment he wanted to see in his mind.

He pulled himself from his thoughts and placed a hand gently on her shoulder.

“Clarke?” he said softly. He pushed the hair back from her face softly, allowing the tips of his fingers to skim across her scalp the way his mother always had when she woke him up for school when he was a child. “Clarke, you need to wake up for a little while.”

She stirred beneath his hands, a soft rumble coming from her chest as she roused from sleep.

“Bellamy?”

Her voice was hoarse and her lashes fluttered against her cheek as she rolled her shoulders forward. And then her eyes flickered open, and bleary blue met his gaze, and Bellamy wondered if his heart would ever stop racing like that when she looked at him.

Part of him hoped it didn’t.

“Morning, princess.”

A smile rose to her face at the nickname, and he vaguely wondered if drowsiness was all it took to get her to do that more often.

“You came,” she observed as she sat up slowly. He watched the way she winced slightly as she moved, seeing that the lesion that spread across her cheek trailed down her neck beneath the collar of her shirt.

A soft splutter slipped from his mouth.

“Of course, I came,” he snorted. He leaned forward, a hand sliding up to each side of her jaw and clutching her face softly between his hands. He met her eyes fiercely. “But if you ever try to pull shit like that again, you and me are gonna have problems.”

She let out a derisive laugh, shrugging out of his grasp.

“You mean shit like wrapping myself in duct tape and adventuring in some acid rain?” she grumbled.

“How did you kn—"

“Kane radioed,” she answered. “Idiot.”

He sighed heavily, his eyes avoiding her stare and falling to examine the pattern of the fabric that adorned the blanket he sat on. He startled when he felt the cool softness of her hands on each of his cheeks, pulling his gaze to hers as he had just done to her.

“I told you that you’d see me again,” she reminded him. “I can’t be sure to keep that promise if you’re going to be a self-sacrificial ass all the time.”

Her eyes bore into his face, revealing her fear and anger and something else he couldn’t identify, something that seeped into every pore of his skin and left him reeling. He laid a hand of his own over one of hers and grazed his thumb over the backs of her knuckles.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” he offered quietly as he savored the way his jaw moved against her palms. “I’ll hold up my end of that promise if you hold up yours. No nightblood transfusions or radiation chambers, no duct tape suits or acid rain escapades.”

She let out a breathy laugh, her chest rising and falling with the sound.

“Deal.”

He knew that it didn’t work that way, of course. He knew a day would come, likely very soon, when they would be given the choice between themselves or their people. He knew that when it came down to it, they would both always offer themselves up to save another without hesitation. It was who they were.

But he let himself believe her, let himself enjoy the moment of cool skin against the warmth of his own, enjoy the way her fingertips now brushed against the stubble of his jaw. Because maybe Jasper had been right. Maybe at the end of the world, it didn’t matter what you’d done or why you did it. Maybe all that mattered was a soft bed and blue eyes and curls that glow even in the dimmest light.

And so an hour or so later, when Clarke begins to get sleepy again, her body still worn from the effects of radiation, he let himself smile when she asked him to stay. He let himself slip off his boots and settled down next to her, his back leaning against the tufted headboard as she settled herself next to his legs. He let her rest her head on his thigh just below his hip as he told her stories in low tones of ancient heroes and adventures and magic, but not monsters—never monsters—reality had enough of those already. He let himself thread is fingers into her hair and rub her scalp soothingly until she drifted back to sleep. And eventually, when his own eyes were heavy from a long night and worries now relieved, he let himself drift off beside her.

Bellamy knew that there would be days to come that would threaten to rip to shreds everything he had ever known. He knew that maybe he didn’t deserve to survive, that maybe humanity would never heal from the atrocities they had committed. But he also knew that in that moment, it didn’t matter. They were not the man and woman charged with things far beyond their years, forced to carry burdens no one should bear. In that moment, they were just a boy and a girl who sought solace in one another, giving each other a moment of peace and quiet before the second end of the world.


End file.
